Fancy Dress

Whenever my children are invited to birthday parties I tend to freeze and then think that I detest these kind of parties because I can never come up with the good ideas.  Naturally the internet is a great source of  ideas but they either look too hard for me or I simply don't have enough time to complete such wonderful outfits.

However when McKenzie got an invite to a Harry Potter birthday party and the invite then named which character she needed to come as I have to say still was not too pleased.  Of course it was not the invite that I was not pleased about but the unknown effort that would need to go into the costume for a nearly 12 year old girl.

Naturally these things take place when life is at its busiest and I am short of time.  Of course at the last minute I remember to check out the character McKenzie needed to go as,  Cho Chang.

 A visit to the local fabric shop, buy fabric, cotton and machine needles before I had googled a pattern for a school unform cape.  Luckily I stumbled upon a very easy to do pattern here and had enough fabric to do the job.

Here is how it all went with a little improvisation on my part.

1.  Gather the necessary tools.  They included my husbands building tape measure because it was the longest measuring thing we had, childrens pavement chalk which really did a great job and a school ruler.  Of course as I needed the floor to work on space was the next challenge.

2.  Then there is the need for the snow angel move (refer to linked instrustions for more complete directions.)

3.  Then I discovered the beauty of pavement chalk.  Once you have got your shape marked on one side of the cape don't stress simply remove you child, fold the fabric in half and pat lightly.  You will find the perfect imprint will be made for you to work from.

 

 

 

 

 

4.  Then there is the cutting....

 

 

5.  The very old sewing machine then comes out and Hayden has a very close look.  Personally I use the machine so rarely I surprised I know how to use it.  Three very long seams stitched and overlocked and I was done.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally a pinecone, a red bead and goggly eyes with glue dots to make one messenger owl and we were done after 2 hours of effort.  Not bad if I might say so myself and thankfully so does McKenzie.